Monthly Archives: March 2009

Who needs a big stimulus package when the German state has never been anything other than a big stimulus package itself? Or at least that appears to be the way the thinking goes here right now.

Europe loves Obama, but they don’t love him that much. Locked in to their so-called social safety nets which already drain them of the cash and maneuverability they might otherwise have for stimulating the economy now, the Europeans will predictably preach stricter regulation at this weekend’s G-20 summit instead (that doesn’t cost anything).

No talk or even thought of big spending or safety net cold turkey here, folks, most certainly not in a German election year. And the President probably feels their pain, too. He can’t even quit smoking.

“Europe’s extensive job protections and unemployment benefits are bad in the upswing, because firms don’t dare to hire people, because then they are glued to them.”

No, I don’t mean that AC/DC song. I’m talking about President Obama’s trip to Europe this week (and thanks to you Mr. Ex-Minister Czech guy). Talk about a breaking fever (in this case Europe’s Obama one). I was sure this infatuation would last at least six months. But, then again, I was also sure about the lasting value of that Florida swamp land I bought a few years back, too.

“The tidal wave of expectation and enthusiasm that Obama rode into the White House is giving way to a more cautious reception in Europe as the administration’s policies begin to take shape.” More cautious? That’s about the most cautious term you can use for it.

But when it comes to “brotherly kisses”, nobody can beat the famous Brezhnev and Honecker Schmatzer (smacker) on the famous East Side Gallery wall in Berlin. Especially now, because it’s not there anymore. As reported earlier, the gallery is getting renovated and thorough Berlin bureaucrats, being thorough Berlin bureaucrats, have had the mural removed.

And they don’t understand the artist’s excitement about the incident, either, being thorough Berlin bureaucrats, like I said. Once the wall has been renovated, they say, all he has to do is paint a new Bruderkuss mural.

Sounds reasonable enough to me. Do you think Michelangelo would have gotten all hot and bothered about somebody removing his Bruderkuss mural from the Sistine Chapel, had there been one? I didn’t think so.

But mostly trains, really. Still not willing to take that first step toward recovery by openly recognizing that they even have a serious problem, scores of Germans in denial (yesterday’s retiree bludgeon murderer at Old Hermann has most certainly been among them) won’t stop visiting the world’s largest model train set at Hamburg’s “Miniature Wonderland.”

“Set on three floors in an old warehouse along the Elbe River, Miniatur Wunderland features realistic replicas of parts of Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and the U.S. Figurines about a half-inch (just over one-centimeter) high represent people in all walks of life.”

You have to bring your own sleeping bag, though. Yawn, Schnarch (yawn) already. Or I would have to, if I ever go, which I won’t. Not even for money, unless it’s a whole lot, maybe. I don’t believe in wonderlands. I’ve seen too many of them.

Das Unheil (calamity) always comes from somewhere else, you see (Hitler was an Austrian, for instance). Now it’s coming from England (even Germans get tired of reading about US-Amerikaall the time). Some British terrorist journalist type has somehow managed to manipulate a Bavarian court that just ruled he can continue to publish his annotated “Witness Reports” series down there.

This is bad or something I guess because Germans are more susceptible to Nazi propaganda from the 1930s than others are I suppose and like with hypnosis I assume they are pre-programmed or even genetically predetermined to start foaming at the mouth and marching into Poland whenever things like this get published I guess, again (funny how you can’t get them to march into southern Afghanistan though).

Continuing to show solidarity for John and Yoko’s heroic efforts to end that dirty war over there in Vietnam, students at Berlin’s John-Lennon-Gymnasium will be honoring this forty-year-old battle for peace by voluntarily coming to school an hour later next year.

Students have voted to begin instruction next semester at nine o’clock instead of eight o’clock in the morning, effectively increasing Lennon’s “Bed-in” action by some 35,000 man/woman/student hours per year.

Or “piecing together history” as it suits you, if you prefer. Sure you can find something good to say about good old, bad old East Germany (that yucky communist one, remember?) if you want to. The thing that interests me is why on earth anyone would ever want to. Some young and dynamic SPD (East) politician did it again the other day, though (that’s SPD, not SED). He warned everyone not to always be putting everything that had to do with the GDR in a bad light because, well, gee… That wouldn’t be nice or something, I guess.

But as an older colleague of his noted in response, once you start arguing like that you could quickly find yourself defending the so-called good side of the Nazis – building the autobahn, putting people to work, stuff like that. And that, of course, wouldn’t be nice, either.

So why not just let dead dogs lie? After all, they have all their lying long behind them.

“The host was absent when German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung held a press conference at the Kabul headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan recently.

ISAF’s commander, General David McKiernan, apparently had something better to do – unusual considering Jung is defence minister of the third-biggest supplier of troops and the fourth biggest donor nation in Afghanistan.

The snub dates back to the last joint press conference held by the two men in the late summer of 2008 when the US general used the ugly word ‘war’ in Afghanistan, much to the annoyance of Jung.

Germany had been studiously avoiding the term when speaking of the unpopular deployment of its troops in the landlocked Asian nation. Since then the two men have avoided each other in public.

McKiernan’s absence could be considered trivial were it not symptomatic of a more general problem: Germany’s influence in Afghanistan and among its allies there has deteriorated markedly.”

That when sex workers start suggesting stimulus packages they’re actually referring to money. Bad? It’s so bad in German brothels these days that fewer and fewer people are coming. We’re talking bad. It’s so bad that experts fear the industry is flat on its back. You want bad? It’s so bad these days that it might take months or even years before business picks up and turns the street corner again.

The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.
- Frederic Bastiat

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.
- Margaret Thatcher

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
- H.L. Mencken

It is like information theory; it is noise posing as signal so you do not even recognize it as noise. The intelligence agencies call it disinformation. If you can float enough disinformation into circulation you will totally abolish everyone's contact with reality, probably your own included.
- Philip K. Dick

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
- Henry Kissinger

Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan, who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense. This nonsense has been noisily proclaimed as immortal wisdom by mercenary followers and readily accepted as such by all fools, who joined into as perfect a chorus of admiration as had ever been heard before. The extensive field of spiritual influence with which Hegel was furnished by those in power has enabled him to achieve the intellectual corruption of a whole generation.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

German schadenfreude knows no bounds, particularly when it comes to the United States. The country loves to feel superior to a superpower like America. Yet Germany also harbors a childish infatuation with Obama — one which has little political grounding. The reasons are psychological. …The criticism of America has always been a bit infantile. One is familiar with the theory from psychoanalysis, when people talk about transference, or when suppressed feelings or emotions are overcome by projecting them onto others. It may work for a while, improving one’s feeling of self-worth by devaluing an imagined adversary. But it always falls short. Which is why the ritual must be constantly carried out anew.
- Jan Fleischhauer

Intellectuals, in the words of the writer Eric Hoffer, "cannot operate at room temperature." They are excited by daring opinions, clever theories, sweeping ideologies, and utopian visions of the kind that caused so much trouble during the 20th century. The kind of reason that expands moral sensibilities comes not from grand intellectual "systems" but from the exercise of logic, clarity, objectivity, and proportionality.
- Steven Pinker

The difference between Greek pessimism and the oriental and modern variety is that the Greeks had not made the discovery that the pathetic mood may be idealized, and figure as a higher form of sensibility. Their spirit was still too essentially masculine for pessimism to be elaborated or lengthily dwelt on in their classic literature... The discovery that the enduring emphasis, so far as this world goes, may be laid on its pain and failure, was reserved for races more complex, and (so to speak) more feminine than the Hellenes had attained to being in the classic period.
- William James

A doctrine must not be understood, but has rather to be believed in. We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength. Once we understand a thing, it is as if it had originated in us. And, clearly, those who are asked to renounce the self and sacrifice it cannot see eternal certitude in anything which originates in that self.
- Eric Hoffer

It is unrealistic to expect people to see you as you see yourself. If people reach conclusions based on false impressions, they are the ones hurt rather than you, because it is they who are misguided. When someone interprets a true proposition as a false one, the proposition itself isn't hurt; only the person who holds the wrong view is deceived, and thus damaged. Once you clearly understand this, you will be less likely to feel affronted by others, even if they revile you. You can say to yourself, "It seemed so to that person, but that is only his impression."

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